EXORCIST 4 FLIPS THE FORMULA
Seems like the entire world was invited except for us! Well, more news from the set of Exorcist: the Beginning due in theaters this July. The film is in its final week of shooting and director Paul Schrader shares some of his thoughts behind the plot and how he needed to ‘flip the formula’ from the first film…..
‘Paul Schrader, director of the upcoming prequel film Exorcist: The Beginning, told SCI FI Wire that he will upend the original 1973 horror film for his movie, which takes the story back to its origins. ‘I have to kind of flip the formula,’ Schrader said in an interview on the film’s set at Rome’s famed Cinecitta studios. ‘I can’t have another 13-year-old girl being demonically possessed.’
‘In The Beginning, audiences meet Father Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) as a middle-aged priest, first during World War II in his native Holland, and later as an archaeologist in Kenya, where he has his first encounter with demonic forces. ‘The formula gets flipped by having a young boy who is … physically afflicted, and as everything in this area of British East Africa … gets worse and worse, and the sort of craziness and the human evil increases, he gets better,’ Schrader said. Merrin makes a startling discovery and the story plays out with a battle between good and evil.’
‘The Exorcist story remains a potent metaphor for Schrader, who was raised in a strict Calvinist household and who attended religious college as an adult. ‘I certainly was raised to believe in a very real devil, a real Satan and a real hell,’ Schrader said. ‘I don’t believe in the physical reality of those things anymore. But I still believe in their power as metaphors. And I certainly understand why they came into being as metaphors and their ongoing function in human psychology and in human spirituality.’ He added, ‘I did say that the [original] Exorcist was the most metaphorically pure of all films, because you have God and Satan wrestling over the … physical body of a 13-year-old girl. … I don’t have quite that metaphor. I have to pull a few other tricks.’ Exorcist: The Beginning is in its final week of shooting and is eyeing a July release date.’
Courtesy of Bloody Disgusting
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